Questions that cross language, boundary, culture, and tradition

Today was the day we’ve been waiting for, our first visits to schools. We visited a kindergarten school of 500 hundred children, from age two and a half through five. They were delightful. They sang, danced, played musical instruments, recited a poem, and demonstrated kung fu for us. They gave us gifts of their painting and other art work. They acted out the story of “The Little Match Girl,” in English, with costumes. How could we be anything other than enchanted! As David Lavender, middle school principal from OPS said, it was better than the Great Wall!

Then we visited a primary school, 2300 children (yes, that’s right, 2300 in one school) in grades one through five. We saw them near the end of their day, in math, computer, and art classes. We saw the room where their internationally competitive robot team works and practices. We listened to their music teacher play lovely music on a bamboo flute, and counted the seats in the room and realized that it’s set up to have 62 students playing bamboo flutes at the same time. The classes we observed, which were grades 3, 4, and 5, all had 55 or more students. A little eye-popping for most of us….

These two schools are what we would probably call lab schools, associated with Xi’an Jiaotong University. The students are children of university staff members or students from Xi’an or the province whose parents pay tuition for the to attend. China’s compulsory attendance law extends from grade 1 to grade 9; kindergarten is not compulsory, nor is it available to parents unless they can pay for it. The programs for the pre-schoolers that we saw were excellent, developmentally appropriate, with small adult to student ratios. They are just not yet universally available to all pre-schoolers in China.

We spent time this morning with the principal of the primary school; she gave a complete and concise overview of the educational system and its challenges in China. I was struck by many similarities to our current reality. There are national content standards in China, with national requirements for particular courses of study that must be taught in every school. Professional development for teachers is a major emphasis. The national education ministry is encouraging greater attention to the development of lifelong learning skills, problem solving skills, and creativity on the part of students. They’re working on a teacher and principal evaluation model. The principal is concerned that students’ assignment to a middle school is based on one test that students take at the end of fifth grade; she thinks it would be better to base that assignment on multiple assessments.

It’s clear to me that there are some questions and issues that cross language, boundary, culture, and tradition…. How wonderful to engage in this important teaching and learning conversation with colleagues around the world.

Posted from Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.